Within the Roman Catholic Church in the nineteen fifties underage boys were castrated. That was to cure their “homosexual behavior“. In at least one case this concerns a boy who had been sexually abused by friars in a Catholic boarding school. Research by NRC Handelsblad proves this. The daily paper found indications for another ten cases.

The newspaper examined the reporting of Rogge, which related to the castration of abuse victim Henk Heithuis. Heithuis in 1956 reported to the police about sexual abuse in a Catholic boys boarding school in Harreveld in Gelderland. After his testimony, he was brought by the police to a mental hospital called Padua in Boekel, Brabant province, also managed by Catholic clerics. There, he was castrated because of homosexual behavior.

Also, sensitive information about former Prime Minister Marijnen was left outside the Deetman report

Information on castration is not the only thing missing in the final report of the committee. Deetman also omitted sensitive information about Vic Marijnen, politician of the Catholic People’s Party (KVP). Marijnen – Minister since 1959, Prime Minister since 1963 – until 1959 was the chairman of the boarding house where Henk Heithuis and dozens of other pupils have been abused. In fact a confidential report of the Deetman committee said that it had been discovered in archives that Marijnen in 1958 had tried to get clerics convicted for sexual abuse out of prison.

This looks like a cover-up by Mr. Deetman. Deetman is a prominent politician in the CDA party, the successor to the Catholic People’s Party (KVP) (and to two protestant parties).

34 thoughts on “Boy raped by priest, then castrated”

To say that this is the fault of the Catholic Church somehow is the same as saying it is the fault of the Dutch. The Catholic Church prohibets sexual impurity in all forms. But it is also comprised of almost 1.2 billion people, quadruple the population of America. How many people are in our prison system and how many people have done atrocious acts in America? Thank you to everybody who does hold the Catholic Church to such a high standard because I hold my Church to a very high standard as well and I believe that all those evil people in the Church should leave and go back into the corrupt world if they cannot strive to be holy. God bless… Travis, Catholic1.net

Hi Travis, it is indeed not fair to hold all Roman Catholics responsible for clerical sexual abuse (the blog post does not say that, by the way.) It is also not fair to hold all Roman Catholics priests responsible for clerical sexual abuse.

However, the Roman Catholic church is not organized like a democracy, but like a hierarchy, with the Vatican on top. From at least over a century ago till now, the Vatican has been implicated in coverups of sexual abuse and other crimes.

Their are indeed wicked people in the Catholic Church, as their are in every institution. But, Christ did not set up a democracy, he established a hierarchy. Unfortunately, there have been leaders who have been abusive of their authority and passive, and they will be ultimately judged. There is no room in any the Church for that type of behavior. I wish our faith was a lot more strict in this sense. I do understand that what is said in the confessional must remain there to protect the sacrament of confession, but the religious need to be held to much higher standards. I am for orthodoxy, and weeding out those who do not belong. I do agree with the Church that she should be able to handle her issues, but civil law needs to be involved as well. And why not? If a priest did something so horrible as what is reported, he should face the highest of consequences, which might just give his eternal soul the correction it needs before he leaves this temporary state of existance. God bless!

Hi Travis, regardless of the historical question whether the present Roman Catholic hierachy was made by Jesus Christ himself: the problem is not just the presence of “wicked people in the Catholic Church” in the sense of people who sexually abuse children. The problem is as much, maybe even more, the presence of people at hierarchical levels, higher than the perpetrators, who themselves do not abuse children; probably in most cases do not approve of those acts in themselves at all; but who fear damage to the church’s prestige as an organization more than they want justice for the victims of the abuse. From an organizational sociological viewpoint, paradoxically, in this way higher hierarchical levels in an organizations may become “prisoners” of lower levels which do wrong. Admitting that people in one’s organization did wrong may be perceived as a blow to the organization’s prestige, to be prevented at all costs; even at the cost of sacrificing the values where the organization supposedly stands for. In this way, there will be coverup after coverup.

This is the fault of the Catholic Church as a whole. Every lay person who remains a member rather than leaving it contributes to these atrocities by financing the Hierachy legitimizing its crimes against humanity.

Our tax dollars go to wars, abortions, lobbyists, release of pedophiles, oil companies, wall-street types, special interest groups and so on… If you were intellectually honest in your standard, you would leave America.

No Jesus did not found the Catholic church and that is a false teaching. Few have ever read or studied the Bible but instead rely on the propaganda of the priest telling them what the church says that the Bible says.

The Catholic church has done much more evil that is yet to be revealed. How much corruption will it take for your eyes to open and you to stop excusing, defending and participating in evil? Come out of her my people.

Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues. You have been begged to turn away from evil. You will receive no mercy if you persist in condoning, and excusing it.